Fast for Mother Earth

As Christian nations observe the Holy Week, my husband, the late senator and former environment secretary Heherson T. Alvarez, always called for environmental penitence – a Fast for Mother Earth. It is a call for personal sacrifice by cutting individual carbon footprints to minimize the impacts of climate change caused by deforestation and the excessive pollution of our water bodies that now manifest in our rivers. Our oceans are polluted by oil spills and plastic gyre.

Climate change, which upsets the balance and sustainability of the global climate, is primarily caused by the warming of the Earth due to excessive carbon dioxide emissions with the abundant burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil and its derivatives, diesel and gasoline.

In 1995, I joined my husband as Senate chair of the environment committee when he presented the Manila Declaration in Bonn, Germany at the first Conference of Parties (COP) for the protection of small island states. He stressed, “We must minimize the use of our vehicles to cut back on fuel, cut back on food consumption, conserve water, take care of our forests and all other dwindling resources as our selfless penitence for the meaningful celebration not only of Lent but of three other significant environmental events preceding Earth Month – International Day of Forests (March 21), World Water Day (March 22) and Earth Hour (March 25).”

Earthsavers DREAMS Ensemble-UNESCO Artist for Peace with the Philippine Center of the International Theater Institute held a comprehensive Techno Arts SDGs ResiliArt Exhibition at the National Library with messages from his colleagues from the Senate.

I must re-echo his call “to fast not only with food and drinks but with consumables like perfume and cosmetics, clothes, shoes, to cut our fossil energy that process and produce them. A gradual withdrawal from our wasteful consumption habits, even on our food consumption, will provide some relief to our beleaguered environment. It builds the message that each individual is made aware of the extreme consequences of climate change – that diminished carbon in the global atmosphere could be our individual spiritual share to diminish death, devastation, disease and deepening poverty and generating health pandemics. Rising greenhouse gas emissions will exacerbate water-related risks over archipelagic Philippines.”

Our country is ranked third among 67 countries in the world as most vulnerable to climate change in a recent survey done by global corporate giant Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. (HSBC). In the HSBC survey, India emerged as the most vulnerable, followed by Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Fast for Mother Earth is an annual program for Holy Week observance during Earth Day month, initiated by the Earthsavers Movement more than three decades ago. Sadly, a penitence that highlights the need to protect the environment seems not to have grown in spiritual dimension as the ruinous impact of climate change is upon us. No continent is spared.

I am compelled to keep alive his legacy and pursue his advocacies such as relentlessly and tirelessly making this appeal every year to remind the public of the grave moral responsibility to protect Mother Earth and help mitigate carbon emissions to stop the destruction of our one and only common home, Planet Earth, our womb of life.

Earthsavers reiterate his conviction that “our simple individual sacrifices will drive home the point that the scourge of climate change will need our scientific as much as our spiritual commitment. Then the agony and the death of our forests and oceans can be collectively resurrected to continue life for our children up to the 7th generation.”

The leader of the Catholic church, Pope Francis, called the destruction of nature a “sin of modern times” and that acting on climate change is “essential to faith.’’ Serendipitously, abstinence is practiced by our Muslim brethren in the period of Ramadan.

In 2013, the strongest typhoon in Earth’s history, Typhoon Yolanda, devastated the country, resulting in more than 8,000 deaths. Super typhoons have grown in intensity, rapidly leaving refugees in tent cities.

Our country finally signed the landmark Paris Agreement on Climate Change that committed the Philippines to reduce its carbon emissions by 70 percent of our usual consumption by 2030.

Governments now realize the primary existential crisis the world faces. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report calls for emergency climate action NOW. Let us pledge not in words, but in action towards a green transition, pushing faster for alternative clean energy.

There is no other alternative pathway. We cannot breach 1.5 degrees Celsius. We suffer Armageddon. Climate justice, loss and damage, decarbonisation, biodiversity with heritage protection have been our battle cry.

Just think, if all the money corrupted were invested to defuse the ecological time bomb of global warming, it would have been possible to prevent climate catastrophes through relevant dynamic application of science, technology and effective cultural communications.

We urgently need the discipline and political will to implement existing laws to combat climate change that will guarantee a safe, clean and healthy world. Hope springs eternal. All of us, regardless of color, creed and social status, must act in concert as global citizens to affirm life. It is heroic to save our ailing Mother Earth.

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Cecilia Guidote-Alvarez is director of Earthsavers DREAMS Ensemble/ UNESCO Artist for Peace and founder of the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA).